Some causes are fairly self-explanatory. Animal shelters roll out images of the plaintive puppy and symapthy is achieved. A famine relief NGO can equate the cost of your daily coffee with feeding a child for a month, and the call to action is compelling.

Other causes don't have it as easy. Domestic violence is one of those causes.  Identification with the problem is more difficult to achieve among well-educated audiences that assume domestic violence is a "low class" issue, and not one afflicting their community. Many people assume women can "just leave," and wonder why more victims don't do so. If they suspect that the victims' own inaction is to blame, then their motivation to donate to the cause will wither.  

Next Door: Solutions to Domestic Violence has long wrestled with such marketing challenges. Needing a way forward, they turned to CWR for guidance. CWR developed a message guideline that framed Next Door's work in terms that its audiences could grasp readily. We also built a marketing strategy geared towards mobilizing its biggest asset, their loyal and passionate former clients. We believe the stories of this group with these individuals as the storytellers are critical to overcoming the false assumptions and beliefs of audiences. Finally, our research discovered a nascent national movement -- fueled by PSAs from Hollywood starts -- that is seeking to raise awareness of domestic violence. We devised a strategy for Next Door to become a special partner to this movement and have begun to facilitate negotiations between the two parties.

This marketing project was funded by the Packard Foundation's Organizational Effectiveness program. This is the most recent of a series of collaborations between CWR and the foundation's program.